Chillida began to experiment with printmaking in the late 1950s. In his early works, he completely covered the paper with : “With a line the world is joined together, with a line the world is divided; drawing is beautiful and is terrible.” In the late 1960s he began to add aquatints to create some dense areas that remind us of his sculptures.

For Chillida both engraving and sculpture were a means of studying light, contrasts between dark and light, the void and the full. In fact, the poetics of contraries was a constant throughout his practice.

Chillida’s graphic work from the late sixties was mainly characterised by a sober composition with a predominance of black and white, in which the two colours became his main means of expression. He combined the two using strokes, stripes or different textures which gave his pieces a more volatile spatial quality.

In Gezna III one can appreciate how the black areas, almost like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, fit together, trap and enclose spaces, taking on almost labyrinthine forms at will, following his abiding concern for the overall volumetric conception. This single-colour yet visually powerful contrast became the artist’s signature and won him international acclaim.